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Edward Tufte Appointed To Help Track and Explain Stimulus Funds
President Obama recently announced several appointments to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, including data visualization expert Edward Tufte, author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The purpose of the panel is to advise the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose aim is "To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information." Tufte said on his website, "I'm doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I'll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary."
he has never run even so much as a convenience store
I realize this is really only intended as empty rhetoric but, come on. Here are a few things Obama has run, for everyone's information:
The Harvard law Review
Chicago's Developing Communities Project (DCP)
Illinois's Project Vote
Chicago Annenberg Challenge
Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services
U.S. Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs
Now, I realize that it is at least arguable that none of these provide the leadership experience required to be an effective president. You probably would like to have seen a former governor/mayor/head of a large agency. I don't think that sort of experience is strictly necessary, but I see how reasonable people could disagree. (Though, if I may ask, what leadership experience does John McCain have that qualifies him in your eyes? Is it just length of service in the Senate?)
But to say that Obama has not run so much as a convenience store is just totally false and it smacks of an either mean spirited (or, at best, willfully ignorant) parroting of the popular right-wing line that Obama is somehow a lightweight.
caritj.org
1. he is not stupid - he is a strict constitutionalist.
Oreaaaaly? What's the Constitutional basis for Paul's Sanctity of Life Act, which defines human life as beginning at conception?
Founding fathers knew the opression from the almighty government first hand and were reluctant to give federal government more power than necessary.
Right, which is why all the "strict constitutionalists" also rant and rave about the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the USAF, spy satellites and NORAD. Because the Constitution only allows Congress to fund an Army and a Navy. Oh wait, they don't - which means the entire lot are political hacks.
They chose gold and silver to be a legal tender so nobody has a print button - fiat currencies were tried in their times already and failed.
Nevermind that we actually had more financial collapses under a backed currency than under a fiat currency. It's like gold bugs have excised the 19th century from their minds.
When people start to gamble and overinvest (prosperity) they compete for loanable funds. These funds shrink rapidly and IR raises to match high demand.
Nevermind that the current crisis was banks making insanely risky investments at 60:1 asset ratios. What would the gold standard done to prevent this? Nothing whatsoever. And of course we were on the gold standard when the economy crashed in 1929, for much the same reasons as it did in 2008.
There was a recession of 1920 (caused by retooling to peace time production and returning soldiers sharply increasing workforce numbers), more severe than the Great Depression - it ended in 1,5 years because government did nothing to fight it. Great depression was enlarged and stretched out by failed policies meant to end it.
Wow. You should have stopped digging a hole in your credibility when you passed Baghdad Bob. When there's a total economic collapse, the only entity that can stimulate demand is the government. Know when FDR actually made the depression worse? When he listened to fiscal conservatives and slashed spending in 1937 to cut the deficit.